Runners Recount Chaotic Scene at Finish Line

Updated April 15, 2013 8:15 p.m. ET

The Boston Marathon took a tragic and unexpected turn Monday when two deadly explosions brought the race to a halt. The standards for qualifying to run in the race are among the highest of any marathon, and athletes endure months and in many cases years of training to get to the starting line. The following are accounts from some of the runners who participated in Monday's race.

Erin Reeves, 31, Massachusetts

Erin Reeves, 31, finished the race in three hours and 58 minutes, just before the explosion. She was getting her medal when the blasts began, then was quickly moved away from the area near finish line. "It was kind of hard to get yourself running again," Ms. Reeves said about fleeing the scene. "But once everyone around you is doing it, you can do it." Ms. Reeves' sub-four hour mark was a personal best -- usually she hovers at just over four hours, a time when the bombs started. "I guess I was lucky, thankfully, that today was the day I was able to break four hours," said Ms. Reeves, who has now run three Boston marathons. "To be away from what happened."

—Kevin Clark

Wesley Korir, Kenya

Wesley Korir, the 2012 Boston Marathon champion, was pushing his young daughter in a stroller Monday evening and recovering from his fifth-place finish today. "Where we are from in Kenya, it is close to Sudan. Sometimes there is violence. But when you come to America, you expect it to be safer," he said.

In the future, he worries that marathons will become more expensive for organizers, which he projects "will probably need more police." But it won't affect his future plans.

"We'll keep training harder, for the people who perished today," he said.

—Sara Germano

Dave Jimenez, 40, Texas

Dave Jimenez, a 40-year-old from Dallas, was near mile 22 when the bombs exploded. Race officials ushered him to St. Ignatius church on the Boston College campus. There, the runners were given water and, just before their departure from the church hours later, pizza courtesy of Boston College students. Mr. Jimenez said he didn't hear of an alternate finish line and said most runners weren't concerned with the race. Many of the younger runners were in tears over the explosion.

—Kevin Clark

Sean Haggerty, 44, New Hampshire

Sean Haggerty, a state trooper from New Hampshire, said he was approaching the finish line when the first explosion went off. When he heard the noise, Haggerty thought at first that is was "some kind of ceremonial cannon" going off prematurely.

"Once I felt the concussion, I knew what it was," he said. "Fortunately I was on the right side of the road running at that point. Within what I thought was ten seconds or so, the second explosion went off and it was complete chaos."

Mr. Haggerty said he saw Boston police and Massachusetts state police trying to get through the broken barriers at the scene of the blast. Mr. Haggerty walked around the fencing and into the blast site, where he and another man helped carry a man who "was clearly in bad shape" out to the middle of the road.

When he returned to the blast site, "there were people lying all over the place," he said. "People were severely injured, a lot of lower extremity injuries."

Mr. Haggerty said he grabbed a belt from another person at the scene and fashioned a tourniquet for a woman who was bleeding heavily from a leg wound, and eventually got her into a wheelchair and pushed her away from the scene, past the finish line to the post-race medical tent.

After a while, Mr. Haggerty said, he left the medical tent, looking for a safe place to wait until joining three other New Hampshire troopers who had run the race with colleagues from Massachusetts, for a ride back to their state.

"I've seen quite a bit during the course of my 13-, 14-year career," he said. "But nothing like that."

—Ted Mann

Brent Cunningham, 46, Alaska

"We heard two explosions, and I thought, 'that had a 9/11 feel to it,'" said Brent Cunningham, who had traveled from Sitka, Alaska, on Friday to run the marathon. He had already finished the race before the blasts and was walking in Boston Common with his family. "It wasn't until we heard sirens, then we knew something had happened."

—Matthew Walter

Jodi Greenburg, 49, Massachusetts

Jodi Greenburg, from nearby Newton, Mass, was running her second Boston marathon. She was less than a mile from the finish line when she heard about the explosions. Runners began turning and walking away, she said, looking for ways to connect with friends and family.

"A lot of people used my phone to text their families and stuff. And the texts weren't going through," she said.

She was one of many runners leaving the cordoned off finish-line area in Boston clutching metallic capes to keep warm in the chill, post-race air. Multiple runners spoke of the kindness of people they encountered.

—Jon Kamp

Beth Wolniewicz, 46, Chicago

"I saw the first explosion. I never saw the second one go off," said Beth Wolniewicz, a Chicago resident who finished the race about three minutes before the first explosion and was about 50 to 100 feet past the finish line. "It was loud but more staggering was the velocity of the smoke. It was rising really quickly."

"It was pretty chaotic. It was the fear of the unknown. When it first went off wasn't a lot of reaction from volunteers or runners but you could hear all the sirens. I think it was the reality of how many fire trucks and how many police cars and unmarked cars quickly responded to situation."

Carl Godwin, 65, Nebraska

Carl Godwin, a pastor from Linclon, Neb., was holding a cape over a black, plastic trash bag somebody else had given him. Somebody else gave him candy. He was also in the last mile when officials halted the race. "I was just running like crazy trying to finish that last mile and all of a sudden people were stacked up ahead," he said. "And I thought 'what is going on, I've never seen anything like this before.' "

He was running in his 22nd marathon and second Boston race. He said some runners were disappointed to miss their chance at finishing, at least until the full gravity of what happened became apparent. "That's what you run for, that finish line feeling," he said. "It is so awesome to turn onto Boylston [Street]."

But "nobody was complaining," he said.

—Jon Kamp

Mark Pelletier, 51, Massachusetts

Mark Pelletier, of Norwell, Mass., who manages an architectural services firm, had just finished the marathon, having stopped at the grandstand on the right side of the street before crossing the finish line, to hug his two children. He said he had not gone far past the line when he heard the first blast. Mr. Pelletier at first thought it might have been the sound of an exploding transformer.

He tried to run back to the grandstand, where his children Michael, 24, and Elise, 22, had been standing, but was stopped by a police officer. Mr. Pelletier was able to reach his wife by cell phone, but his phone battery soon died – he'd been using it to monitor his progress over the course. Eventually he was able to borrow a cell phone and arrange a reunion with his children, who said they had run from the scene after the twin explosions.

"It's funny," Mr. Pelletier said. "It was like a perfect day for me. I ran my best time: it was 14 minutes better than my last time. And my kids were there."

"I hope they find these people," he added, "and I hope justice is swift."

Phyllis Perkins, 46, Illinois

Phyllis Perkins, a runner from Naperville, Ill., was crying. She was with her running partner Christine Bell, 46 years old, also of Naperville. They were less than a half-mile from the finish line when they heard the blast. "This was my first [marathon] and at first I thought it was part of the celebration," said Ms. Perkins.

Then they saw police running. "That's when I knew something was very wrong," said Ms. Bell. "They stopped us and said you are NOT going any farther," Ms. Bell said. The pair never finished the race.

Thom Kenney, 43, Army Veteran

Thom Kenney, an Army veteran who recently returned from Afghanistan, had just finished running in the marathon.

"I was about 50 feet away. I had just crossed the finish line. We were entering the recovery area when the first explosion went off. There were probably three or four people around me. We were all crouching down. Most of the people were looking back at the first explosion, wondering what it was, when the second explosion went off. When that went off, we all started calling our families as fast as we could."

—Brian Costa

Wendy Jaehn, 38, Chicago

Wendy Jaehn, executive director for Chicago Area Runners Association, a nonprofit running association, had finished the race, showered and was about to step into a cab to the airport when she got a phone call. Ms. Jaehn's association had bused about 100 runners to the marathon, and she said they were working to track down individual runners.

"A lot of reports have been coming back over Facebook so we know majority of runners are accounted for."

At the airport, she described the mood as "somber." "We are just reeling from it. This has fundamentally altered the sport and how these events will be run and managed. It's just devastating."

Peter Sagal, NPR

NPR personality Peter Sagal, a renowned runner, had run the race as an escort for a legally blind competitor, William Greer, participating in his first Boston Marathon. Messrs. Sagal and Greer had just crossed the finish line, completing the race with a time of four hours, four minutes, when the explosions went off.

"I was about 100 yards beyond the finish line," Mr. Sagal said, entering the finishing chute where runners cool down after the race. "You get your medal and the bananas and treats, when there was a huge explosion, it sounded like a really big firework, a very loud noise, louder than say a backfire or anything like that," said Mr. Sagal, who hosts NPR's weekly news quiz, "Wait, Wait… Don't Tell Me!" and writes a column for Runner's World magazine.

He turned to see a plume of white smoke rise, when suddenly another explosion followed, doubling the smoke.

"At that point, officials who were there just to get an orderly exit from the marathon urged us to keep moving away from the finish line and William and I had a very normal marathon finish," Mr. Sagal said. But rumors flew and "nobody had any idea what was going on."

The run with Mr. Greer was a charity event that raised around $10,000 for the Massachusetts Association for the Blind, said Mr. Sagal, who also is host of a forthcoming series on PBS-TV, "Constitution USA with Peter Sagal."

His partner, whose vision is limited to making out hazy shapes, "was a little freaked out," Mr. Sagal said, and mainly concerned about locating his wife. She eventually was found, and all three are safe, Mr. Sagal said.

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